Answers needed

[Louis Chérubin]

This all got me thinking.

Let's say there is a supernatural being, and it wants to communicate with me. It could use whatever funny powers it has to write messages in the air, right in front of me. It would be manipulating the natural world. I couldn't see the being itself, because our light particles cannot bounce off it.

Now. I could speak back, and let's say it could hear me. (Not entirely sure how, if our sound waves cannot affect the supernatural...) It could then "talk" back to me by moulding sound waves in our natural reality, so I hear a voice. In this way, I could communicate with this supernatural being.

But here's the problem. I can't know for sure what is causing these messages or sounds. Since they are entirely natural, I can't distinguish between a supernatural being causing them, or some natural being/force using technology I've never experienced. Except for appealing to incredulity, I cannot logically deduce it's from supernatural causation. There may well be amazing powerful beings that are natural but I can't see or experience in any normal way, which could perform such feats. And maybe one day we would create the technology to be able to measure and experience these natural beings. But if they are supernatural, then we never can. And we can't know that we will never be able to interact with the previously mentioned hypothetical supernatural being; hence it remains a mystery whether it is or is not natural.

This all rests on my personal definition of supernatural from my website. If instead you simply refer to what is known at any particular time, then any unexplainable thing could be called supernatural as a placeholder, although I don't see the point. It's just another way of saying unexplained.

I think you've jumped to the authenticity of supernatural revelation. That is a very different matter than the simple existence of a supernatural being, which doesn't require revelation at all. I find there are good reasons to believe in the authenticity of the Bible as God's communication to man, but ultimately faith is required. I've come to really appreciate how the Bible makes perfect sense of human struggle and the whole narrative of world history.

In regards to the origin of the universe though, I don't want to be caught in the quagmire of this reasoning: "The natural world is all that exists, so the natural world must have been formed through natural causes." My rationality cannot accept this as valid. Instead I think: "The natural world exists. What is the most probable cause?"

Anyways, stay cool across the pond.